within the circles of our lives

Within the circles of our lives

we dance the circles of the years,

the circles of the seasons

within the circles of the years,

the cycles of the moon

within the circles of the seasons,

the circles of our reasons

within the cycles of the moon.

Again, again we come and go,

changed, changing.  Hands

join, unjoin in love and fear,

grief and joy.  The circles turn,

each giving into each, into all.

Only music keeps us here,

each by all the others held.

In the hold of hands and eyes

we turn in pairs, that joining 

joining each to all again.

And then we turn aside, alone,

out of the sunlight gone

into the darker circles of return.

~ Wendell Berry

art by Sammy Hill, Swinomish Nation

rejoice

 

~ Kathleen Battle

2500 Montréalers sing L. Cohen’s “Hallelujah”

 

~ Leonard Cohen

and 2500 Montrealers

now is the time

Now is the time to know

That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider

 A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand 

That all your ideas of right and wrong 

Were just a child's training wheels 

To be laid aside 

When you finally live

 With veracity And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy 

Whom the Beloved 

Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me, 

Why do you still 

Throw sticks at your heart 

And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside 

That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know 

That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time

 For you to compute the impossibility

 That there is anything

 But Grace.

Now is the season to know 

That everything you do Is sacred.

~ Hafiz

from Poetry of Presence 

through the sacred womb of your soul

If
you want
the Virgin will come walking down the road
pregnant with the holy
and say,
“I need shelter for the night, please take me inside your heart,
my time is so close.”

Then, under the roof of your soul, you will witness the sublime
intimacy, the divine, the Christ
taking birth
forever,
as she grasps your hand for help, for each of us
is the midwife of God, each of us.

Yes there, under the dome of your being does creation
come into existence externally, through your womb, dear pilgrim—
the sacred womb of your soul,
as God grasps our arms for help; for each of us is
His beloved servant
never
far.

If you want, the Virgin will come walking
down the street pregnant
with Light, and
sing . . .





~ St. John of the Cross
Daniel Ladinsky translation
Love Poems from God

to Mary

A child unborn, the coming year

Grows big within us, dangerous,

And yet we hunger as we fear

For its increase: the blunted bud

To free the leaf to have its day,

The unborn to be born.  The ones

Who are to come are on their way,

And though we stand in mortal good

Among our dead, we turn in doom

In joy to welcome them, stirred by 

That Ghost who stirs in seed and tomb,

Who brings the stones to parenthood.

~ Wendell Berry

from This Day - Collected and New Sabbath Poems

hopi

 

~ Ramson Lomatewama

water song

 

www.singthewatersong.com

Grandmother NANCY ANDRY

Grandmother MARGARET BEHAN

Grandmother  CLARA SOARING HAWK

Navajo early morning blessing

 

~ "Hooghan" from the album Sacred Mountains by Louie Gonnie

all these prayers

 

So a little spring prays to the ocean, 

so the beating heart prays to the heart of the universe, 

so the little word prays to the great Logos,

 so a dust speck prays to the earth, 

so the earth prays to the cosmos, 

so the one prays to the billion, 

so human love prays to God’s love, 

so always prays to never, 

so the moment prays to eternity, 

so the snowflake prays to winter, 

so the frightened beast prays to the forest silence, 

so uncertainty prays to beauty itself.

And all these prayers are heard.

~ Anna Kamieńska

from In the Great River: A Notebook

with thanks to love is a place

with gratitude

 

in the wordless beginning

iguana & myrrh

magma & reef ghost moth

& the cordyceps tickling its nerves

& cedar & archipelago & anemone

dodo bird & cardinal waiting for its red

ocean salt & crude oil now black

muck now most naïve fumbling plankton

every egg clutched in the copycat soft

of me unwomaned unraced

unsexed as the ecstatic prokaryote

that would rage my uncle’s blood

or the bacterium that will widow

your eldest daughter’s eldest son

my uncle, her son our mammoth sun

& her uncountable siblings & dust mite & peat

apatosaurus & nile river

& maple green & nude & chill-blushed &

yeasty keratined bug-gutted i & you

spleen & femur seven-year refreshed

seven-year shedding & taking & being this dust

& my children & your children

& their children & the children

of the black bears & gladiolus & pink florida grapefruit

here not allied but the same perpetual breath

held fast to each other as each other’s own skin

cold-dormant & rotting & birthing & being born

in the olympus of the smallest

possible once before once

~ Marissa Davis

Singularity

art by Joan Sokolowska

with thanks to The Marginalian

you are the fullness of perfection here and now

 

I can see with the utmost clarity that you have never been, 

nor are, nor will be estranged from reality, 

that you are the fullness of perfection here and now,

 and that nothing can deprive you of your heritage, 

of what you are. 

You are in no way different from me, only you do not know it.

 Be fully aware of your own being, 

and you will be in bliss consciously.

 Because you take your mind off yourself 

and make it dwell on what you are not,

 you lose your sense of well-being, 

of being well.

You people do not know how much you miss

 by not knowing your own true self.

The moment you know your real being, 

you are afraid of nothing. 

Death gives freedom and power. 

To be free in the world, 

you must die to the world. 

Then the universe is your own,

 it becomes your body,

 an expression and a tool. 

The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description.

His state tastes of the pure, uncaused, undiluted bliss. 

He is happy and fully aware that happiness

 is his very nature and that he need not do anything,

 nor strive for anything to secure it. It follows him,

 more real than the body, nearer than the mind itself. 

To me, dependence on anything for happiness is utter misery.

 Pleasure and pain have causes, 

while my state is my own,

 totally uncaused, 

independent,

 unassailable.

As he gets older, 

he grows more and more happy and peaceful.

 After all, he is going home.

 Like a traveler nearing his destination and collecting his luggage,

 he leaves the train without regret. 

The reel of destiny is coming to its end

—the mind is happy. 

The mist of bodily existence is lifting—

the burden of the body is growing less from day to day.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

 from I AM THAT...

art by Oskar Hokeah

a mustard seed

Become as a child,

become deaf, become blind!

Your own substance

must become nothingness;

drive all substance, all nothingness far from you!

Leave space, leave time,

eschew also all physical representation.

Go without a way

the narrow footpath,

then you will succeed in finding the desert.

 ~ Anonymous

(excerpt from Granum Sinapis)

  found here in for lovers of god everywhere 

by roger housden

toward emptiness

In the desert,

Turn toward emptiness,

Fleeing the self.

Stand alone

Ask no one's help,

And your being will quiet,

Free from the bondage of things.

Those who cling to the world,

endeavor to free them;

Those who are free, praise.

Care for the sick,

But live alone,

Happy to drink from the waters of sorrow,

To kindle Love's fire

With the twigs of a simple life.

Thus you will live in the desert.

Mechtild of Magdeburg

translation by Jane Hirshfield

the last cloud drains away

 

The birds have vanished down the sky.

Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,

until only the mountain remains.

~  Li Po,

  from Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain

 translated by Sam Hamill

 from Crossing the Yellow River: 

Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese

home

Whether drifting through life on a boat or 

climbing toward old age leading a horse, 

each day is a journey and the journey itself is home. 

~ Basho

my heart leaps up!

 

The child is father of the man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

(Wordsworth, "My Heart Leaps Up")

...

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

...

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind;

In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;

In the soothing thoughts that spring

Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquished one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,

Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;

The innocent brightness of a new-born Day

Is lovely yet;

The Clouds that gather round the setting sun

Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

~ William Wordsworth

excerpts from Ode Intimations of Immortality

 from Recollections of Early Childhood

art by Kathryn Jacobi Studio

barn's burnt down -- now I can see the moon. - Mizuta Masahide

 

Amor Fati

(love of fate)

The time is now past when accidents could befall me; 

and what could now fall to my lot

 which would not already be my own!

~ Nietzsche

from Thus Spake Zarathustra

...

It is said that before entering the sea

A river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has travelled,

from the peaks of the mountains, 

the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, 

that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.

The river can not go back.

Nobody can go back.

To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean

 because only then will fear disappear

 because that’s where the river will know

 it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,

 but of becoming the ocean.

~ Khalil Gibran

experiencing peace and clarity within

 

~ Rupert Spira

the beauty way - joy - happiness - confidence - peace

the Dine way

 

lightening the burden

 

The siren's song -

"Be more than you are,

be everything you're not."

.

The sages say,

"Be less, not more,"

because all that we're not

lightens the burden,

delighting without hope

our desiring hearts.

.

~ Joseph Goldstein

from Dreamscapes of the Mind,

Poems and Reflections

the world is myself

 

In the mirror of your mind images appear and disappear.

 The mirror remains.

 Learn to distinguish the immovable in the movable,

 the unchanging in the changing,

 till you realise that all differences are in appearance only

 and oneness is a fact.

 This basic identity -- you may call God,

 or Brahman, or the matrix (Prakriti),

 the words matters little -- 

is only the realisation that all is one.

Once you can say with confidence born from direct experience:

 'I am the world, the world is myself','

you are free from desire and fear on one hand 

and become totally responsible for the world

 on the other. 

The senseless sorrow of mankind

 becomes your sole concern.

~ Excerpts from I Am That 

by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

may all beings be happy

 

Perhaps nothing more fully expresses the spirit of Jennifer’s lifework

 than the recent performances of “Song For All Beings." 

A large-scale multimedia cirque de spirit, 

these events featured over 100 artists

 and included Bruce Cockburn, Joanna Macy,

 Ferron, Jack Kornfield, Anam Thubten Rinpoche, 

Sarah Dugas, Raz Kennedy, and many others. 

Song For All Beings Live!

 was released as a DVD/video recording of the 2017 show.

In these Arms A Song for all Beings © (p) Jennifer Berezan I cannot turn my eyes, I cannot count the cost Of all that has been broken, all that has been lost I cannot understand, the suffering that life brings War and hate and hunger And a million other things When I've done all that I can And I try to do my part Let sorrow be a doorway Into an open heart And the light on the hills is full of mercy The wind in the trees it comes to save me This silence it will never desert me I long to hold the whole world in these arms May all beings be happy May all beings be safe May all beings everywhere be free

~ Jennifer Berezan

with thanks to When I was 69

fall with me here

So it came time
for me to cede myself
and I chose
the wind
to be delivered to

The wind was glad
and said it needed all
the body
it could get
to show its motions with

and wanted to know
willingly as I hoped it would
if it could do
something in return
to show its gratitude

When the tree of my bones
rises from the skin I said
come and whirlwinding
stroll my dust
around the plain

so I can see
how the ocotillo does
and how saguaro-wren is
and when you fall
with evening

fall with me here
where we can watch
the closing up of day
and think how morning breaks

~ A. R. Ammons

photo by R Christopher Vest

 

where amazement and clear thought twine their slow growth into us

.

.

The most living moment comes when

those who love each other meet each

.

other's eyes and in what flows

between them then.  To see you face

.

in a crowd of others, or alone on a 

frightening street, I weep for that.

.

Our tears improve the earth.  The

time you scolded me, your gratitude,

.

your laughing, always your qualities

increase the soul.  Seeing you is a 

.

wine that does not muddle or numb.

We sit inside the cypress shadow

.

where amazement and clear thought

twine their slow growth into us.

.

~  Rumi

.

I would cease to be

 

God

dissolved

my mind - my separation.

I cannot describe now my intimacy with Him.

How dependent is you body's life on water and food and air?

I said to God, "I will always be unless you cease to Be,"

and my Beloved replied, "And I

would cease to Be

if you

died."

~ St. John of the Cross

from Love Poem from God

translation by Daniel Ladinsky

art by Daniel Taylor

beneath the ancient mountains tears

 

~ Tania

with thanks to Barbara @ When I was 69

losing yourself in love

 

 

 

 

Meditation provides a deeper appreciation 

of the inter-relatedness of all things

 and the part each person plays.

 The simple rules of this game are honesty

 with yourself about where you are in your life

 and learning to listen to hear how it is. 

 

Meditation is a way of listening more deeply,

 so you hear from a deeper space, exactly how it is.

 

 Meditation will help you quiet your mind, 

enhance your ability to be insightful and understanding

 and give you a sense of inner peace.

If you meditate regularly, even when you don’t feel like it, 

you will make great gains, for it will allow you to see

 how your thoughts impose limits on you.

 Your resistances to meditation are your mental prisons in miniature.

When I asked Maharajji how to meditate, he said, 

“Meditate like Christ.” 

I said, “Maharajji, how did Christ meditate?”

 He became very quiet and closed his eyes.

 After a few minutes,

 he had a blissful expression on his face 

and a tear trickled down his cheek. 

He opened his eyes and said, 

“He lost himself in Love.” 

Try the meditation of losing yourself in love…. 

 

 

 

 

~ Ram Dass

 

the weighing

The heart's reasons

seen clearly,

even the hardest

will carry

its whip-marks and sadness

and must be forgiven.

As the drought-starved

eland forgives

the drought-starved lion

who finally takes her,

enters willingly then

the life she cannot refuse,

and is lion, is fed,

and does not remember the other.

So few grains of happiness

measured against all the dark

and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us

only the strength we have and we give it.

Then it asks more, and we give it.

~ Jane Hirshfield

on the nature of awareness

 

~ Rupert Spira

free 'here and now'

 

As long as there is the body and the sense of identity with the body, 

frustration is inevitable. 

All changes in consciousness are due to the "I-am-the-body" idea. 

Divested of this idea, the mind becomes steady. There is pure being, 

free of experiencing anything in particular. 

You are accustomed to dealing with things, physical and mental.

 I am not a thing, nor are you. We are neither matter nor energy,

 neither body nor mind. 

While alive, it [the body] attracts attention and fascinates

 so completely that rarely does one perceive one's real nature.

 It is like seeing the surface of the ocean

 and completely forgetting the immensity beneath.

As long as you take yourself to be a person,

 a body and a mind, 

separate from the stream of life,

 having a will of its own, 

pursuing its own aims, 

you are living merely on the surface, 

and whatever you do will be short-lived 

and of little value.

When you desire and fear, and identify yourself with your feelings, 

you create sorrow and bondage. When you create, with love and wisdom, 

and remain unattached to your creations, 

the result is harmony and peace.

 But whatever be the condition of your mind,

 in what way does it reflect on you?

 It is only your self-identification with your mind

 that makes you happy or unhappy.

 Rebel against your slavery to your mind,

 see your bonds as self-created 

and break the chains of attachment and revulsion.

 Keep in mind your goal of freedom, 

until it dawns on you that you are already free, 

that freedom is not something in the distant future

 to be earned with painful efforts,

 but perennially one's own, to be used! 

Liberation is not an acquisition but a matter of courage, 

the courage to believe that you are free already 

and to act on it.

We are free 'here and now', 

It is only the mind that imagines bondage. 

Once you know your mind and its miraculous powers, 

and remove what poisoned it 

-the idea of a separate and isolated person- 

you just leave it alone to do its work

 among things for which it is well suited. 

~ Excerpts from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's

I AM THAT

trauma: not what you think

 

~ Gabor Mate

listen to my silence

Listen to my silence

that murmurs through these leaves

listen to this unwritten song.

.

Much is heaped between these lines

risen without mouth

silted up in the underground.

.

Listen to my paper-thin silence

that is gone with the wind

through the trees.

.

Hear my voice

at the curve of your mouth

earthlydark.

.

~ Jos Steegstra

photo by Michael Kenna

.